Category Archives: Husband

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Christmas, Household Management, Husband, Stay connected with kids
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Be light

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Hello, Mamma. Happy Thursday! You still have over a week left to get all that Christmas stuff done, so deep breath. You’ve got time.

There are so many opportunities to connect with our kids at this time of year. Special food, special events, lights and color and magic all around. …As long as we don’t work ourselves to the point of break-down or freak-out trying to make that “perfect” Christmas.

I remember a couple years ago, flipping out at my husband. He is normally a more than full-partner partner, but toward the end of the year, his work gets insane, and I’m lucky to see him for half an hour in the mornings, never mind dinner, and we’re all usually asleep when he gets home at night. Nearly all the Christmas prep, then, falls to me.

He had made some comment – I’ve no idea what he said exactly – about my not stressing out, or why did I have to spend so much money at this time of year. I, close to the breaking point anyway what with doing my work and my home-work and his home-work and being solely responsible for all the preparations, gift buying, wrapping, cooking, etc., well, I flipped.

“HOW DO YOU THINK THIS ALL HAPPENS?” I shouted gesturing to the gifts and wrapping paper that littered our room. “YOU THINK THIS IS MAGIC? YOU THINK MAYBE ELVES COME IN TO OUR HOME AT NIGHT AND DO THIS?”

So, yeah, don’t get to that point.

I know you, you high-expectations, high-achieving, want-it-to-be-great-Mamma. You will run yourself to the edge of crazy making beautiful Christmas for your family. Just don’t run yourself over the edge, that’s all I’m saying.

You see, there is no perfect. There are many and varied opportunities for magic, you don’t have to touch them all to have a wonderful Christmas. Pick what matters to you and your family, do that, and then give yourself a break.

If the cards don’t get out, that’s okay. If you buy your cookies instead of making them, that’s okay. If you skip the party to go sledding, that’s fine too. Whatever works for you.

The point of Christmas is to be closer. It’s about love and peace and joy. It’s about remembering the guy who came to tell us that people are more important than stuff. To celebrate the light of the world coming into the darkness.

Be light, then. In heart and in home.

With love,

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God, Gratitude, Husband, Mamma and God
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Sunday morning peace

God, Gratitude, Husband, Mamma and God Leave a comment

A peaceful Sunday morning, snuggled up on the sofa, kids still asleep upstairs. Just sent a grateful husband out for his workout. Tea, toast, liquid dog asleep on the cushion next to me. Sun barely breaking, clock ticking languidly in the quiet of the room as I sit and thank God for my life.

Counting my blessings. Hope you will too.

With love,

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Household Management, Husband, Money
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Get a budget!

Household Management, Husband, Money Leave a comment

Good morning, Mamma! Happy Friday! Early this morning, before the kids were awake, my husband and I had our weekly Friday morning budget meeting. Second one in a row – Woot! Woot!

It’s weird talking about money, isn’t it? People just don’t do it. But it’s so huge. It is woven through just about every action of our day – such a terrible stressor or such a lovely safety net. It’s the number one thing married folks fight over; it’s why we work (well, part of why we work) right?

So, this budget meeting…

Oh, we’ve had a budget for years. I would type out a beautiful excel spreadsheet, anticipating costs for the year to come based on past bills and events coming up. I’d print it out and show it to husband – five pages of color coded beauty. He would thank me for my conscientiousness, we’d both comment on how much we’d have saved by the end of the year. We’d feel smug. We have a budget!

And sometimes we even followed it.

Mostly though, we just lived. Whoa! Class party that needs costume? It’s your turn to bring snack? What do you mean you lost your cleats? The too often Working Mommy crutches of Starbucks, take-out food and retail therapy. Dollars just dribbling away, seeping around the edges of our budget.

It happens. Apparently this year it happened to us a lot. Three weeks ago I opened the credit card bill (the one we have entirely paid off, with great fanfare, twice now in our marriage) and it was suddenly up into a nausea inducing level of debt that must be addressed. Cue the guilt and chagrin. Cue the panic and the embarrassment. Ugh! I hate the sick, scary feeling that we screwed up and the horrible pressure that comes with debt. How does this happen?

Well, we know how it happened so, thank God, we know how to fix it.

It happened because we spent when we felt like spending instead of spending the way we had planned to spend. And we can fix it by actually living our budget again instead of just looking at it.

Thus the Friday morning budget meetings.

How about you? Been there?

Thank God I have a partner willing to work with me on this. Thank God we’re both employed and we can get back on track fairly quickly. This is not easy stuff, but with two committed grown-ups in the house, it can be done.

This money stuff, this is tricky and tough to talk about, but it will cut your legs out from under you if you don’t get it under control, so brave the discomfort and plan a budget meeting.

Get some education if you, like me, had parents who didn’t teach you this stuff. Go to a class! Read a book! It’s not like you turn 25 and suddenly you absorb an understanding of assets, liabilities and interest rates. Years ago, husband and I read Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. Great information. And funny too. We’re big fans.

Whatever plan you follow, I hope you have a plan, darling. Get this stress out of your life.

And it’s nice if you can do it week by week, over a yummy latte with your man. Makes you feel like a grown-up. Makes you feel like partners. Good stuff.

With love,

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Marriage

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My daughter asked me yesterday, as we were driving around having a delicious vacation day together, into a comfortable silence as we drove, my gorgeous, teenage, looking-at-colleges daughter turns to me and asks, “Mom, what’s it like being married?”

Well now.

(For those of you still in the My Little Pony and Doc McStuffins stage, enjoy. These questions are coming to you someday too.)

And most of you know, I’ve been divorced and remarried. I’ve also watched my friends, I’ve celebrated with girlfriends who talk about their men with gratitude and joy, and I’ve held others as they cried and dialed attorneys offices. I know a lot of ways marriage can be.

“Well, honey,” I started, and paused, praying for God to give me something wise and helpful and accurate, “They say a good marriage is the best thing, and a bad marriage is the worst. I think that’s because your marriage will touch every aspect of your life. It can either uplift and support everything you do, or it can be a weight and a pain that affects everything in a negative way.”

I paused, again, praying for the words.

“You know I was divorced?” She nods. “Well, he and I went into that marriage without really talking about some of the real world aspects of what marriage means. We hadn’t even talked about whether we wanted kids. Not about where we wanted to live, not about what we hoped our life would look like, not about money, nothing. We were attracted to each other, and we enjoyed each other’s company, but that’s not enough.”

Daughter, frighteningly, is listening intently. “You’ve said you were like the country mouse and the city mouse.” She offers.

“Yes, we liked each other, but wanted very different things from life. And I was afraid to talk to him. You have to be able to talk to your husband.”

“You talk to Daddy.”

“Yes. And sometimes we talk loudly in the garage, right?” Daughter smiles. The garage is where my husband and I go to argue when things are really heated. “But we work hard at telling each other what we need, and we work hard to listen to each other and to work it out. You know we’ve gone to a counselor to get advice when we’ve been stuck, right?” She nods.

I talk about how important it is to marry someone you trust and respect. I talk about how there will be things you don’t like about your spouse, and that’s okay. I mention her Daddy’s love of car shows and bad 80’s music. She laughs.

We are getting close to our destination, and I want to end this little life lesson on a positive note. I also want to be as accurate as possible about my own marriage, which I am immensely grateful for, and which I want my daughter to know is wonderful, but not perfect.

“Daddy and I are each other’s best friends. Knowing that he is there, that he and I have decided that we are in this for life, that we will do whatever work we need to do to make it good… it’s a warm safe thing that I carry with me throughout my day. Even when my day is really hard, even when Daddy and I are disagreeing, I know that under everything is this base of love and trust. It’s work, a good marriage is work, it can be really hard work, but it is so worth it.”

…How’d I do, Mommies? Lord, I hope alright. And heaven help you when these questions come your way.

This morning, I asked my husband about it. His answer? “You are like the sun,” he said. “Even on the dark, cloudy days, I know you’re there, and that you will always be there, providing warmth and light.”

“You mean when life is cloudy or when I am cloudy?” I asked with a smile.

“Yes.” He responded, and kissed me. Not bad for a stoic Swede.

With love, Mamma. So much love,

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Imperfectly ever after

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Good morning, Mommies! Happy Friday!!! Happy Friday before a big fat delicious long weekend Friday.

I hope you get a chance to have some couple time with your husband this weekend, even if it’s just to put your legs in his lap and snuggle a bit on the sofa, or the back deck, or the front stoop after the kids to go bed.

It’s important.

I got up this morning and came down to a fairly messy kitchen. My husband had mysteriously fried up some leeks last night and left them in a bowl on the counter. Covered in tinfoil, but greasy fried mystery leeks on the counter none-the-less. The frying pan was still on the stove.

(Why exactly we need fried leeks, I’m just not sure. Doubtless I’ll find out today, but as of this morning, it’s still a mystery.)

I am so grateful for this crazy man. So grateful that I feel safe enough to ask him for what I need. Grateful that we made it through the years of figuring each other out and developing our common language. (Forgiveness and effort, again and again and again.) Grateful that we learned to give and give and not keep score.

And grateful that my gorgeous Indian friend the pulmonologist told me years ago of her arranged marriage that perhaps arranged marriages have a higher success rate because they go into it knowing that they’ll have to work at it. She changed the way I look at marriage, and I’m grateful.

At a dinner party last weekend, husband and I laughed with the group at how unlikely it was that he and I should have ever gotten together. The boy from the tough city neighborhood. The girl from the quiet little suburb. He, laid back, I, er, more tightly wound. (These days, less tightly than I used to be, but still). He grew up listening to Beastie Boys. I grew up listening to Beethoven.

I still have to ask for what I need – just last weekend when he and I were so very worried about the safety of Mission Trip Kid I had to go to husband and say, “Please stop doing the dishes, I don’t need you to do the dishes, I need a hug and to hear you tell me you love me. I need you to hold me. I need us to pray together”. He stopped doing the dishes and wrapped me in his arms, wet soapy hands and all.

He still has to ask for time away by himself. Because I still forget sometimes that, as an introvert, he needs that time alone to recharge.

I think the fairy tales should read, “And they lived imperfectly ever after, in patience and forgiveness, occasionally reminding each other of what they need. Sometimes they yelled, and then they apologized. They shared the laundry, they argued in the garage so they wouldn’t scare the kids, they sought counseling as necessary. Sometimes their kitchen was messy. And they laughed, a lot.”

That’s my happily ever after.

Equal parts crazy and messy and beautiful. Sound familiar? I hope so.

Have a great weekend, Mamma.

With love,

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Arguing with my husband

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Good morning! Happy Friday, Mamma! Come on weekend!!!

While we were on vacation, our oldest son thanked my husband and I for the way that we fight. Really. That really happened.

What kiddo actually said was something like, “I’m so grateful that I live in a family where you guys can say ‘I’m sorry I was grumpy and unreasonable; I’m sorry I was impatient; I’m feeling crabby because I don’t want this week to end; I’m feeling guilty because, as the mom, I shouldn’t have let the kids get so badly sunburned; it wasn’t your fault please forgive me; of course I forgive you, can you forgive me too?’ I love that you guys do that, thank you.”

He thanked us.

Rest assured, it’s no fun for anyone WHILE we are fighting, but we usually manage to come to a peaceful resolution, and after we do, we sit down with the kids and explain what was going on and how we worked it out.

Perhaps you are superhuman, Mother-Teresa-zen, and you never fight with your man. Well, congratulations if you can manage that, but me, I am oh-so very human, and so is my man, and so we occasionally disagree and occasionally, those disagreements turn to fights.

It’s taken us many years of marriage to work out the pattern our son thanked us for. Here’s what we’ve learned about ourselves:

1) There is usually something else going on. If we are fighting about the dishes, somebody probably had a bad day at work and is worried about losing their job or something else fear-inducing like that. Figure out what that underlying fear or pain or stress is, and say it out loud.

2) Be nice. Complain about behavior, not about the person. Absolutely no using the words, “you always…”.

3) Know your spouse’s style – my husband is an introvert, he’s going to need time to process by himself to figure out what is going on; I am an extrovert, I need to talk things through and I need to hear words from him. Although it costs us something, we each work hard to give the other what they need: I give him quiet time to be alone, he gives me words. We did not figure this out for ourselves, a counselor helped us see this.

4) If I’m tired, running late or hormonal, I’m infinitely more likely to blow up. I try hard to be aware of those externals that impact my emotions and not blame my husband (or kids) for my emotions.

5) If we are going to be loud or angry while we are working this out, we get away from the kids — we usually go into the garage – they know that we are disagreeing, they don’t need to be in the middle of it.

6) Keep in mind it is better to be happy than right. If you can give this one to your spouse (without keeping score!), give it and get on with your life.

You’re human. You’re going to fight and your kids are going to see it. They will learn from you how to handle disagreements. God willing, they will learn from you about humility and forgiveness and compromise. They will learn about mutual respect and understanding and communication.

Not easy. And so very worth it.

With love,

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Tell him what you need

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This morning, when my alarm went off at 4 AM, I turned to my husband and said, “The kids will be spending the night with Grandma and Grandpa in a few weeks. I need you to plan a date night for us, and I need it to be romantic.”

My husband said something like, “MMMFGRG… HUH? What?”

I repeated myself.

“Ok”. He said.

I will need to lovingly repeat my request later today, and probably again in a few days. And I’ll get my date night.

My husband, my wonderful man, is many things, but he is not the kind of guy who will notice an opportunity for romance and plan accordingly. For me to wait for him to be that guy would be an exercise in frustration for both of us. For me to wait till the day, hoping silently that he had noticed and planned something, and then storming around the house in a huff because he hadn’t, waiting for him to notice how upset I was, punishing him for not noticing… this kind of childish drama wrecks relationships and marriages.

So, instead, I ask for what I need.

My man does dishes, legions of them. He makes dinners – good dinners, really good dinners. He drives to Walgreen’s in the middle of the night for Pedialyte when our children are throwing up. He is a good, hard-working, faithful man. Why would I want to punish a man that good, for what he is not?

But, I do need romance, so I ask.

Because then he can then easily understand what I need, and fill that need for me.

If you married a fish, appreciate his wonderful fishy-ness. Be grateful for all the good things your fish brings to your relationship. But, if you married a fish, don’t waste your time or your marriage wanting him to be a bear.

Date night. If you need it, ask.

And dishes and dinners, if you need those, ask for those too.

Simple, direct, straight to the point, and, I would hope, lovingly requested. Let your man know what you need.

Happy date night, Mamma.

With love,

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Husband, Not what I planned, Parenting
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Ode to stepdads

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Ode to stepdads —

When my oldest was around four, he asked me why we called my husband Stepdad. “Because he stepped into your life after you were born,” I responded.

And thank God he did.

So, today, for my husband, our son’s stepdad, gratitude and respect to you my darling. So much gratitude and respect.

Thank you for teaching me to let our son play with the creatures on the riverbank. Thank you for teaching me to let him get dirty and wet and to let him explore. Thank you for helping me to understand what it is to let him be a boy.

Thank you for including our son’s dad in your game of baseball or football or soccer when he would come over for a visit, and then quietly excusing yourself to let them have that time just to themselves.

Thank you for, when I asked, saying and meaning, “I love kiddo, I love spending time with kiddo, but I’m not his dad; he has a dad, and they need that time together.”

Thank you for, when I asked you after you’d proposed, did you know that I was a package deal?, for saying and meaning, “I know that in marrying you, I am signing up to love kiddo like a son, with no guarantee that he will ever love me like a father.”

Thank you for cleaning up the dog throw-up, and the kid’s throw-up, and my throw-up, and never complaining. Okay, almost never.

Thank you for never differentiating between our kids, bio and step, in public or in your heart. “Hi, let me introduce you to my kids: Kiddle, Middle and Little. They are the greatest kids ever – practically perfect in every way.”

Thank you for the hours and hours of driving between houses without complaining. For finding cool parks and activities along the way to make the travel easier for everyone.
Thank you for never once talking about child support or grousing about money. Never once. Thank you for, when I asked you, saying and believing, “you cannot put a price on having a good relationship with your co-parent”.

Thank you for your love, your generosity, your selflessness. Thank you for not needing to be right, for not needing it to be fair, for making our children’s happiness your greatest good.
Stepdads are a special kind of hero. I am so grateful to you for being ours.

With love,